


phones and photosynthesis

by b_writes



Category: Grey's Anatomy
Genre: Bed Sex, Canon Compliant, Denial of Feelings, F/M, Kinda, Masturbation, Mentions of Masturbation, Not talking about feelings, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sex, Shower Sex, Wall Sex, alex karev loves meredith grey and that's a fact, lots of phones, minor PTSD, no beta we die like men, none of it explicit, talking about feelings, then NOT denial of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-21
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-11-26 19:31:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18184787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/b_writes/pseuds/b_writes
Summary: alex karev is an expert in ignoring things, but even he knows he shouldn’t ignore this.this title is dumb, this whole thing is dumb. i watched season 11 and my merlex heart said "fuck you" and made me write this. don't read it. it's not good.





	phones and photosynthesis

it’s saturday when she tells him about “pause”. they’re walking in the hallway on their way into work and she’s angry at him for not answering her text. she’s saying something about how christina would have answered but he’s not really listening. he’s just trying to focus on his breathing, rather, making sure he _is_ breathing _._ she’s asking him to pause fucking his girlfriend to talk to her? more importantly, she’s willing to stop with derek to talk to _him_? yeah, alex is pretty sure he’s not breathing.

-

it’s sunday when he and jo are having sex and he hears a phone chime. at first he thinks it’s her but before he can unpack the fact that his heart tugged (and his dick twitched), jo yells out “pause!” she lunges for her phone which is perfect because he’s not sure he’s controlling his face well enough for her to see him. he doesn’t want her to see his face because he’s pretty sure he loves jo and the last thing he wants is to hurt her. he makes sure to give mer a special ringtone.

-

it’s tuesday when he realizes that’s the worst possible thing he could have done. he’s gotten a few texts from her but thankfully he’s been fully clothed each time. now it’s tuesday and he has jo pushed up against the wall of the on call room. they’re both too horny to take it slow and his ten year old patient took a turn for the worse. he can’t do anything for the girl a few floors away in kidney failure, but he’s angry and really fucking horny so he has jo pushed up against the wall with his hands tight on her hips. he thanks the god he doesn’t believe in that she wanted to face the wall (to avoid chafing on her thighs she had explained. last time they’d done this she’d been facing him and ended up in misery for her 8 hour surgery the next day) because when he hears that stupid ringtone he’s pretty sure his pupils blow to the point that his sclera is black and he’s definitely sure he bites his lip to stop the moan. he doesn’t call pause.

-

it’s still tuesday when he finds himself staring at his phone while sitting on the floor of the bathroom, but it’ll be wednesday in about 38 minutes. alex karev is an expert in ignoring things, but even he knows he shouldn’t ignore this. jo has to finish a surgery that went long. when she caught him in the hallway on her way to the OR she said she was sorry but he made sure she knew it wasn’t a big deal. he remembered what it was like to be a resident. unfortunately that had made him think about when they all lived together in that house and he spent the rest of the day in a daze. but he finally catches up to himself sitting on the floor of the bathroom. there’s something about the tiles that pulls the consciousness into the body. he briefly thinks that that was why izzy laid on the floor just a couple feet away. so she was present in the moment rather than thinking of—nope! he cuts himself off before he finishes that dangerous train of thought. he should call mer. but he definitely shouldn’t. he has his phone out and he’s staring at it’s black screen trying to make up his mind. on the one hand, this is exactly why he needs meredith grey. sure, up until recently her Person (with a capital ‘p’) has been christina, but mer has always been alex’s Person (he’s pretty sure she was his Person before he knew what that meant. even back when they hated each other, he needed her). so he should call, right? but on the other hand, he knows that if he calls, and she picks up, he won’t know what to say. “hi mer, i spent all day realizing that i liked living with you more than my girlfriend and i think that i love you so you can’t call me or text me any more because if you do my girlfriend will find out”? that doesn’t really work for him. for a second he’s glad derek isn’t there, because if he called and she was fucking him, she would stop and then what? he’d hear her sexy, breathy voice ask “what’s wrong” because he never calls so something must really be wrong. that would be disastrous. he doesn’t call. he changes her ringtone back to the generic.

-

it’s friday when jo asks why he doesn’t “pause”. she does it, and she wouldn’t mind if he did (she seems to be warming up to the idea that he and mer are close. he remembers her saying to edwards that meredith was lonely and sad–he hadn’t been a part of the conversation himself, so he never confronted her about it, but he was definitely short with her for a few days–so she needed alex in her life). there’s no way he’s telling her that the reason he doesn’t want to check his phone to see what mer says is that he’s afraid he’ll start thinking of mer instead of jo while they’re having sex. he tells her that mer can wait, that she’s more important. she eats it up like candy. he feels like shit later (it wasn’t a lie that he wants to focus on her, but it definitely isn’t true that jo ranks higher than mer in the list of people important to him. he needs to talk to his Person about the fact that he’s an awful human being and that he ruins people and oh god, it’s his fault that ava/rebecca went crazy and izzy hates him and his mom and his sister, oh he definitely ruined them. and now, he’s ruining himself because he doesn’t want to ruin mer, but he can’t talk to his Person about that because he can’t ruin his Person) and spends almost all night in the bathroom, finger hovering over the call button in mer’s contact. his phone dies.

-

it’s saturday. “hey i texted you and you didn’t respond, what’s up?” (mer always asks ‘what’s up’ the same way. voice full of concern and patience.)

“i, uh, my phone died.” (it’s a lame excuse and it sounds fake, but it’s true.)

“oh, well if you need to you can borrow my charger.” (they don’t have the same kind of phone, something she always forgets.)

“no, that’s alright, i’ll borrow arizona’s. was everything okay? what’s wrong?” (he hadn’t been able to look at her until then, but he puts aside the stupid hurricane of emotions in his brain because if she really needed him and he wasn’t there for her then he really is a shit Person.)

“it’s nothing, just needed help with bailey and zola. bailey was throwing up and zola was having a tantrum. i just needed an extra set of hands, but i got it under control.” (meredith sucks at lying. it’s a known fact. meredith grey is a terrible liar, and she’s lying now. that’s even worse because it means she doesn’t feel like she can talk to him–he’s such a _shit_ __human being–or that it’s so bad she’s talking to christina instead which means defcon 1. she looks tired.)

“okay, well, my phone will be charged for when you need to reach me next time” (that’s all he knows how to do. he doesn’t want to push and he completely understands not wanting to share something. so he’ll just be here.)

-

it’s friday again. a different friday. but not a better one. mer wants him to watch her kids. he likes her kids, but he’s constantly afraid that he’s going to fuck up. that he’ll be a shit parent (for the night). that it’s genetic. (mer’s a great mom, he reasons, and she had a shit mom so it can’t be genetic.) that when he’s not a doctor to kids, he’s bad with them. he’s glad she didn’t ask over text. because if she asks him why now, he can explain he doesn’t want to ruin her kids, but over the phone there’s no easy way to say that. maggie offers.

-

it’s monday, and alex is pretty sure he’s going to cry. not in front of anyone, of course. probably in the stairwell. either he’s going to cry, or he’s going to punch something. he spent all weekend having tons of sex with jo. like, a lot. he leaves his phone on, and then turns it off, and then turns it back on, over and over. should he have it on in case she fights with derek this weekend and needs to call him? should he have it off in case she calls or texts when he’s having sex with jo and he starts thinking of mer instead of jo underneath him? again and again. but she doesn’t call. at all. which is way worse because she calls him when she feels dark and twisty, sure, but she calls him when good things happen too. so not calling just leaves him out of the loop. he and jo have sex before work, which they normally don’t do. but he needs it. and then he’s in the elevator and the door opens and mer is there looking… off. and he asks about the weekend because oh god, if she comes into his bed tonight for whatever reason and he sees a hickey he’s going to cry. he jokes that it’s good she wasn’t there this morning but he can’t make eye contact because if she was there this morning, he would “pause”. he would “pause” so hard (he doesn’t mean for it to sound dirty, but now he’s picturing meredith and him—). she practically runs out of the elevator. now he wants to cry. or punch something. because she’s not talking to him and he’s really not good at that. he tries not to be jealous about maggie and mer getting closer. he asks maggie about it but she seems resistant to tell him anything. does that mean it’s something bad and she doesn’t want to talk to him? maybe he’s going to throw up.

later, she’ll come to his house and say she didn’t go visit her husband, instead she went to a hotel (he’ll feel that churning in his gut again. his chest tightens. he crosses his arms maybe to protect himself? she went to a hotel with another man? ~~now he has two contenders?~~ ) she’ll explain that she went and had a weekend to herself, one where she wasn’t a wife, mother, or doctor. that she doesn’t want to not be with derek, but she doesn’t really want to be with him right then. he’ll pull her into his side. (he’ll think back to the time he was going to kill ross for killing his dad and she just held him tight. he’ll have a shit storm of things he’s thinking about but she probably does too and the least he can do is hold her close.) jo will come in naked and he’ll be saved from the pressure to talk about his feelings. he’ll say he’s going to marry her. (it’s true. he wants to marry her, but he knows that however much he might love jo wilson, he’s not marrying her because she’s the one he wants to spend the rest of his life with, he’s got his Person for that. no, he’s still just a terrible person who doesn’t deserve meredith grey. so he’ll marry jo, who he loves.) all of that will happen later, but right now, alex just wants to cry. or punch something. or throw up. 

-

it’s wednesday. alex finally understands “dark and twisty”. he feels “dark and twisty” inside. he needs to talk to mer. but he can’t. she’s got so much going on, and that’s not how this works. mer talks to him and then when they’re talking he mentions something without meaning to and she digs until she finds out what’s wrong and she helps him figure it out. or they trade, one thing for another. he doesn’t share. but mer just spent a whole weekend getting away from the responsibilities that were overwhelming her and clearly she needed it. he doesn’t want his “dark and twisty” to make her “dark and twisty” darker and twisty-er. he needs to come up with a better way to put that. she texts him a quick “thank you for listening” at 2:19 on wednesday morning because he’d been there for her monday night. that makes him think of monday night. he’s not a cuddler. he doesn’t snuggle. but hugging mer feels right. when jo hugs him goodbye that afternoon, he holds her for a little bit longer. sometimes he just needs human contact. he spent so long avoiding comfort and affection (with the exception of sex) that when he became friends with mer, izzy, christina, and george, he didn’t know what to do. he thinks back to one evening, before ava/rebecca, before his failed relationship with izzy, he had had a rough day and came back to mer’s house, his house, ( ~~their house~~ ) and he was overwhelmed and she set down her horribly made bowl of mac and cheese and pulled him into a hug. her head tucked under his and her arms wrapped around his torso. now, he wants to hug her. he wants to hold her. but he’s not allowed, he won’t let himself. he’s dark and twisty inside. when he sees her his chest gets tight. his stomach is in knots. jo pulls away and gives him a weird look. he doesn’t do it again.

-

it’s sunday and he’s having dinner with jo. nice, easy dinner. they’re laughing and joking and he reaches out to pass her his plate (she likes to try his food. she asks, which is more than he can say for mer) and he knocks over his water. they have a habit of keeping phones and pagers on the table in a pile when they go out. neither are on call. but his water spills and seeps across the table, they reach his phone first. jo, with her quick hands, snatches up all their stuff, but his phone is gone. he gets a new one that night (it’s not like he can go long as a doctor without being able to be reached). he doesn’t have time to put in any contacts.

-

it’s monday and he gets a text from an unidentified number. he hasn’t put in contacts yet. he knows most of them, having grown up in the age before smartphones, but he doesn’t need to know the number (he does know it though) to know it’s mer: “are you busy?” (that’s code for “can you talk? i need to talk. call me”) he calls.

“hey, sorry, can you babysit the kids for a second? i have an emergency surgery on a patient and i’m not on call so they won’t take the kids at night care. they started checking the list, it’s ridiculous. i just need someone to watch them and i know you don’t like to but i just really need your help.” she sounds like she’s been crying. he knows her crying voice.

“i can’t, i’m actually at the hospital right now. i can call jo.” (just be there for her. don’t push, she just needs you to be there for her.)

“oh, thank you so much. text me if she can and i’ll drop them off at the house.” (the house. they always call it “the house” when they’re together. not her house, not his house. the house.) she hangs up.

he goes to call jo, when he realizes he doesn’t have her number memorized. he asks edwards.

-

it’s tuesday now. she finished her surgery, he finished his shift. jo is watching her kids at the house. she’s slumped against the wall of the stairwell that’s his cry-spot. her head is in her hands. her elbows rest on her knees. she’s not crying. she’s just sitting there.

“hey.” (it’s stupid but that’s all he can say. he’s overflowing with emotions. he’s been emotional all his life, his father and mother made him angry and sad, but she’s made him extremely emotional. she’s made him happy, but how he feels about her makes him dark and twisty. he’s dark and twisty at himself. and now, it’s the perfect time. they’re alone. he should tell her how he feels before he explodes. but all he can say is “hey.”)

her head jerks up. “hey.” her eyes are clear. she hasn’t been crying (he knows that’s not true in the grand scheme of things. she’d called no more than five hours ago and she had mer-crying-voice, but she’s not crying now. hew wonders if she’s a storm of emotions too.) they don’t talk more than that. he turns his phone off and sits down next to her and she curls into his side. maybe she misses affectionate contact too.

-

it’s thursday when they all have lunch together. he’s sitting next to maggie (who he’s still a tiny bit jealous of. he feels kind of like he’s being a bad Person and maggie is being a good one and he fears that mer will replace him.) and across from callie. he has to look diagonal from mer or he’s not sure what he’ll do or say. and then he jokes they need to get laid, that mer needs to get laid ( ~~with me with me with me~~ ). and maggie and mer joke and he realizes he doesn’t really want to hate maggie, he just doesn’t want to be replaced. he actually likes maggie. and he definitely likes that she makes mer happy. (he feels a jolt of paralyzing fear that she will cut him out of her life like izzy did. damn he really needs to talk to his Person.) as they walk away, he pulls out his phone and makes sure her number is saved. he knows it, but it’s nice to see her name pop up on his screen.

-

it’s wednesday when he sees her name on his screen. usually, she’ll text before calling, but this time she calls straight away. he would have picked up immediately in any other situation, but right now he’s making jo come for the third time. he doesn’t even look at the phone until the third ring and there it is in big letters: MEREDITH. jo tells him to answer. she knows meredith only calls in an emergency. he scrambles to pick up the phone and he’s still pulling out when mer says “i need your help, please. can you- can you come over please?” he’s breathing hard at first, so he can’t properly hear anything but what she’s saying (he won’t lie, this isn’t helping on the whole i’m-in-love-with-my-best-friend-and-i-need-to-keep-that-a-secret front because jo is looking at him with–albeit dazed eyes and–a concerned expression on her face trying to see if it’s an emergency and his dick is in plain view) but he’s drowning in freezing cold water when he hears her sob (he’s definitely not hard now). he says he’s on his way and he’s dressing within seconds of hanging up. jo (even with all her doubts about meredith she doesn’t even bat an eye. he’s such a shit person.) is helping him find his keys and proper clothes and asking if he needs her to cover for him at work. he’s not even sure what he says to her because he doesn’t get a real breath until he’s holding meredith in his arms, spilled red wine staining the kitchen table and dripping to the floor. he doesn’t even need to ask why she’s clutching the phone to her chest. they don’t talk about it.

-

it’s friday night. friday night is christina’s night, he knows that. usually, he gets a break from thursday afternoon to saturday morning. jo likes to think of it as his night off. it ends up having a different effect on him. for some reason, going so long without talking to mer messes him up. he’s better when he’s with her, his friends made him better and now that christina’s gone, it’s just the two of them. and meredith makes him better. they haven’t talked about the derek situation since that monday ages ago. it’s been weeks. and since they haven’t talked about the derek situation (alex knows it’s mean, but ever since shepherd started putting mer second, he can’t help but feel a rush of anger whenever the man comes into conversation. he started calling it the “derek situation” when mer explained her feelings after that weekend off. but not to her, because they haven’t been talking about it), it’s really hard to be her Person. mer has a lot of things that happen in her life. sometimes she comes over and they take care of the kids together (he feels better about it when she’s there. it’s less stressful. she’s got his back.) and she talks about work or the interns or maggie or something random. every once in a while something reminds her of her mother or, worse, her father, and they talk about it. (and because he’s not a sharer, he’ll add on about his own problems when something is relevant to the conversation or when they trade stories.) but they haven’t talked about the derek situation which is arguably the biggest thing in her life. it’s her husband, the father of her kids. and she doesn’t want to be with him right now (he swears, he repeats her words in his mind at least once a day) and she doesn’t want to talk about it? (sometimes he wonders how christina wasn’t engrossed in the drama that was meredith grey’s life. it’s not like he constantly thinks about it, but her life seems like so much. he definitely has a less interesting life than christina, if he remembers correctly. things with jo are really good, and he’s doing well at work. whatever the reason, he feels like he’s very invested in mer’s life.) now that it’s friday night it’s like a perfect storm. they haven’t been talking about her big problems. and he can’t talk about his big problems. and after weeks of that, he’s exhausted emotionally and now that it’s friday it’s like shit has hit the fan. jo is home, so he has to keep it together. they watch some movie together laying on the couch, her leaning into his side (she’s just a tiny bit too short and her hair smells different). he keeps it together but god he needs to figure this out because without mer, that tsunami of emotions will eventually overflow until he’s a storm of a person. he keeps his phone within reaching distance and goes over the pro’s and con’s of calling. it’s not his night, but he needs to talk to her.

-

it’s tuesday when he realizes she’s been working a lot more. she’s there for her kids, but when she’s not at home she’s at the hospital. maggie and mer are talking at the table next to his in the cafeteria about the model of the massive tumor mer and maggie and bailey had removed ages ago. he’s sitting by himself, going through the records on an extremely challenging case when maggie smiles and says quietly “it’s cuddly, right?” to mer.

mer laughs and says “cuddly, but a little too pointy to keep in bed.” he’s close enough to hear. he know she must miss derek sleeping next to her. she always liked being close to someone when they had sleepovers in the living room, and she always had derek or christina. she comes into his bed in the middle of the night for christ’s sake (not that he minds) so it’s not a surprise that she looks more tired than usual. a while ago he started making sure he was dressed before he fell asleep in case she needed to come talk in the middle of the night. but she hasn’t been more than usual. and actually, it’s been _less_ than usual. (his chest feels tight.) he realizes she’s taking extra shifts. she’s tired, and instead of taking extra day shifts, she’s having the babysitter come and take care of them while she goes back to work. he watches out of the corner of his eye as she downs the rest of her coffee and gets up. “i have a surgery to get to.”

-

it’s friday. again. and mer didn’t go to dc. again. in fact, she’s in the OR performing surgery, instead of visiting her husband. they still haven’t talked about it. jo (who’s become more and more interested in mer, something that would be nice except it’s not in a “lets be friends” way, but more of a “can i become you” way.) is saying something about mer having a perfect streak (which makes sense cause she’s good), and there’s been an earthquake (when the world started shaking he thought he might have a heart attack. mer was in the OR full of heavy equipment and full cabinets and she was protecting her patient with her back exposed. the room stopped quaking and mer was unhurt and jo was too so everything was good.), and they’ve been joking about their fighting patients and jo had asked to be on mer’s service and he said no (meredith sat down next to him and joked and laughed and some of that dark and twisty feeling alleviated and for a second it’s just them two, and all of a sudden his patient is crashing and mer saves his life and jo and edwards are running off to prep them an OR). so it’s friday. and they’re operating and she says they’re both in adult stable relationships. sure he is (liar! liar, liar!) but it’s clear she’s not (“i definitely do not want to be with him right now”). he says he thinks they’re in a rut. he doesn’t mean to _hurt_ her. but then she lists off his less-than-stellar past relationships. alex knows he has a shit track record, but it’s hard to hear her say it. say it to hurt him. and he gets that tightness in his chest again, he thinks he’s not breathing when he snaps that her marriage is fine, it just doesn’t have a husband in it. and maybe he’s breathing again when the patient starts bleeding (when you’re not breathing, you’re not thinking, arizona had said) but he certainly isn’t when jo brings up the streak. and mer looks surprised, then spooked, then she’s out of there and he only has a few minutes before he passes out from lack of oxygen so he follows her. and all of a sudden she’s saying that the streak began when derek left. that maybe she’s better off without him. he hasn’t breathed properly in a long time and this should be the moment where his lungs remember how. she said maybe she’s better off without him (breathe! this is it! breathe!) but somewhere in the back of his head he’s screaming at himself “your fault! your fault! your fault!” this should be the happiest moment of his life. but his brain is screaming at him that his best friend is going to split up with her husband because he opened his big, fat mouth and he should sew it shut before he ruins her completely.

-

it’s friday, he thinks. or maybe it’s finally saturday. whenever it is, he’s trying to sleep. or trying to not think. he can’t tell if he’s relieved she’s not leaving shepherd or if he’s miserable that they’re together. enter mer. he says what she needs to hear. he says that her husband isn’t cheating on her. he’s about ready to punch something. when they’re down in the tunnels later, he’s at the stage where he’s not quite sure what he wants to do. he’s listening to callie and maggie’s possible explanations and thinking of all the things he wants to do to shepherd. how badly he wants to punch his stupid face. and callie’s telling him to say something. (what would make mer feel better? what the hell can i say to make her feel like he’s a good person? he’s not!)

“look, i’ve watched you two suck face for years.” (good start) “you’ve disgusted me for a long, long time. he’s into you. and if a guy is still into you, it still means he wants to do you. and if he still wants to do you, you’re solid.” (eloquent. true. he spent years watching shepherd put her second or freak her out. they had good times, sure, but he can’t endorse him to mer. he really didn’t want to say anything.)

-

it’s saturday for sure now. it’s late, and he’s sitting on that damn bathroom floor. mer’s voice is playing over and over in his head: “you of all people. i need you to believe in me.” (when he was in that OR it was like his eyes were glued to her face.) like he doesn’t believe in her. like he wouldn’t trust her with his life. she is everything to him. “you want to take it out on me, go on. you want to yell and hit and scream 'cause things are hard at home, okay. you want to be a mess, be a mess. i don't care. i can take it.” he remembered what it was like to be angry all the time. he remembered beating up his dad so bad he almost killed him. even when he was an intern, he was angry all the time. and then meredith came into his life and he felt like he could relate to someone. finally, he could love someone who understood when his love was messy. when someone understands where your coming from, they can love you better. (he’s a monster. _jo_ is that person. _jo_ understands where he’s coming from. _jo_ is the one ~~he’s supposed to love~~ he loves.) alex hates himself. it’s saturday, so he’s trying to make himself available. if derek really did cheat, then he needs to be available. he hates himself for hoping she’ll need him. and he hates himself because he’s not the one she needs. he picks himself up off that bathroom floor and goes back to bed, his phone under his pillow.

-

it’s wednesday. alex karev didn’t get to hear many fairy tales in his life, but he remembers overhearing some mom at the hospital tell one to her daughter in the bed next to his when he was eight and his dad broke his arm. this fairy tale was about a beautiful girl whose mother died (now that he’s taken care of mer’s kids enough to know most of the classic tales, he’s pretty sure they all start that way). and her dad remarries someone awful and then he goes on these trips. and he’s gone so much that one day he just disappears. so the girl’s stepmother and stepsisters treat her terribly. time goes on. a handsome prince has a ball and the girl dresses up in a fancy dress and a mask and meets the prince. they instantly fall in love. at this point, eight-year-old alex was skeptical. his mom and dad didn’t love each other now, and they’d known each other for forever! how can you fall in love all at once!? but the mother to the girl in the bed next to his kept on going, like this was every-day stuff. there was something about a clock, and the girl ran away but left behind a shoe. the prince searched for her far and wide. when he came to her house, she was there in her old clothes and dirty from doing house chores. and the prince had her try on the shoe. the prince, alex remembered, made her put on the shoe because he didn’t recognize her without the fancy clothes and perfect life. alex remembered that story every time he went on a serious date, or met people he was supposed to impress. they wouldn’t like him without a nice life and his perfect scrubs, so why bother? why make an effort to be perfect if they won’t like him when the truth comes out. better to be mean and send them running than get his hopes up. mer didn’t run, though. everybody always left him, but mer didn’t.

-

it’s monday. he really likes maggie. better than he thought he would. and she’s going on about nobody loving her, which is bullshit, because she’s very smart and funny she’s got that adorable lisp. he tells her all of this. it’s not until he’s in the shower after work not thinking about mer that he realizes all of the things he likes about maggie, he loves about meredith. she’s crazy smart and makes him laugh all the time. and she’s got the slightest lisp to some of her words that’s so incredibly _her_. then jo comes to join him in the shower so he stops thinking about it.

-

it’s tuesday when a plane crashes in the middle of the fucking city. he spends the whole day worrying about mer and feeling guilty for amputating arizona’s leg. he and mer didn’t talk about the plane crash much. at the time, christina was her Person, even when she was in minnesota. but he could remember her mentioning things about being out there. knew a lot of it from the others too. when they sat maggie down and explained what happened, april had most of the information from arizona and owen had told her some of what christina told him (there wasn’t a lot that mark was lucid for, but what he remembered he told jackson, who didn’t like to talk about it). he knew some from yang (she’d written him a note when she left, telling him to take care of mer. when she had her first panic attack and derek wasn’t home, he was there. he wasn’t sure what to do, other than tell her that derek was safe and she was safe and he was there to protect her. christina later explained that when they were in the woods, mer was in shock. she had lots of blood loss from the wound in her leg, they were all severely dehydrated, lexie died before she could say goodbye and then when they finally got derek back, he collapsed.) and mer (once alex knew what she’d been through, he understood what she meant when she screamed for derek or cried out “get off of her”. mer had told him that every once in a while when she’d regain consciousness she’d hear the wolves eating lexie. that derek wasn’t awake much, but when he was he was in agony. that mark kept trying to tell her how much lexie meant to him and that when he saw her he’d tell her that meredith loved her. that arizona was afraid and in such pain. she never talked about christina. alex thought that maybe seeing christina so broken was the scariest part.) but he didn’t know maggie well enough to tell her anything except the facts. he considers calling her, but she’s probably busy calling yang. this is big, and she needs her real Person for this. (sometimes he thinks of himself as the rebound Person. the interim Person. the one who’s not good enough, but gets the job anyway cause she needs _someone_.)

-

it’s wednesday and meredith says “derek is dead” three times and faints. alex stops breathing.

-

meredith disappears and it’s as if the world has ended. he calls her every day, sometimes more than once. he prays (something he hasn’t done since he was living with his father because it’s not real and it won’t do anything) every time he listens to the ringing of the phone. he has her voicemail memorized. every pause. every word. he becomes friends with maggie, but they mostly talk about mer. meredith had said something once about being the sun, and to him, she was. she was the sun and he was a stupid little plant that needed her to survive. months go by and he starts thinking something is wrong. maybe she’s hurt. she’s gone and he’s got a mer-shaped hole in his heart.

-

the first time it happens, it’s on accident. he and jo are in bed and he’s about to get up and call mer when she rolls on top of him. she leans in, he leans up, they’re kissing and it’s perfect. he doesn’t mean to, it’s not on purpose, but all of a sudden, mer’s face is all he can see. this time, he doesn’t stop. he only glances at his phone once, hoping (as he does sometimes) that she’ll call and tell him she’s alright and she’s coming home. but then he’s got jo under him and he knows it’s her. she’s got that line of freckles on her stomach and that tiny scar on her left nipple. but while he knows it’s jo, he’s picturing meredith. when shepherd and mer lived in the house with all of them, there were nights where he could hear them going at it. he tried not to listen. sometimes he’d bring chicks over so that he wouldn’t have to hear “mer-der”s noises. (there are times he won’t let himself acknowledge where he listened to them and memorized her sounds.) he’s thinking of the way she would whine and whimper and moan. he knows it’s wrong (fuck, he’s the worst person on the planet) but he can’t help himself. there’s even a moment, one moment, where he swears he hears meredith’s voice say “alex” from jo’s mouth (he busies himself with making marks on her neck so he doesn’t say the name he wants to). when they’re done, she goes to pee and he takes a shower before his shift starts. she’s sitting where mer does when she’s ranting to him. he washes his body twice and watches any redeemability he ever had swirl down the drain.

-

it happens again. it happens a lot. sometimes he just thinks about meredith. other times he imagines it’s her and him. once, he was thinking about mer and how she used to hug him tight, or smile just for him. that time he walked in on her and shepherd (he feels a pang of regret for all the times he hated shepherd. he made her happy and he didn’t cheat on her.) while she was mid-orgasm. he’d frozen for a second as she threw her head back and cried out. before she could open her eyes and see him standing there contemplating throwing off her then-boyfriend and kissing her, he yelled “get a room!” and closed the laundry room door. he got so hard he went to find jo. after that, he fucks his own hand instead. he hates himself for it. it’s sick and wrong. it’s kind of cheating, he thinks. but if he’s honest with himself (he tries to avoid that, it’s never good) he knows it’s been going on longer than meredith has been gone. it’s been going on longer than he’s known jo. it’s not healthy. it’s fucked up. _he’s_ fucked up. he just misses his Person. a lot.

-

thanksgiving is hard. he hates thanksgiving. this one especially. all he can think about is sitting with mer in that patient’s room all those years ago, trading a story for a story. trying to subtly call her hot. ruffling her hair. (trying not to let it bother him that she was clearly in love with shepherd) maggie and jo are at the house, jo is trying so hard to make the perfect dinner (he’s having flashbacks all over the place) and it’s adorable and admirable. god, he loves her so much. he doesn’t even realize he went to go call mer until he’s not looking at that picture anymore. he’s looking at her face! her real-life face! he’s breathing and his heart is soaring. he’s memorizing every detail trying to tell if she’s okay. how she is. she says she’s fine and the kids are fine and thank _god_. as always, it’s too good to be true. maybe the women he loves are hard wired to hurt him. or there’s a special class that they’re required to take. because she tells him to stop calling and she hangs up, taking his circulatory and respiratory systems with her.

-

alex thought it was hard not knowing where she was, but it’s way harder to not be able to call. he didn’t realize how much he did it until he couldn’t. when something good happened, he’d call. when something bad happened, he’d call. when he was bored, when he was tired, when he didn’t know what to do with his hands. and knowing she didn’t want to hear from him? that was the worst part. now he just stares at her contact photo. or holds his finger over the “call” button like he did that night in the bathroom.

-

he’s lightly buzzed. he’s not drunk, he knows what drunk feels like, but he’s not sober either. whatever he is, he’s listening to arizona, maggie, and jackson talk about the shit tree. he didn’t want one. “what’s the point” is what he’d said. (intern year, they had a tree in this house. it left marks on the ceiling. he knew that because mer told him so.)

“and i was like ‘you have to have a tree on christmas.’ otherwise your soul is just curdled and you’ve given up on joy.” maybe she has a point.

-

he almost doesn’t pick up the phone. it’s a random number. but something tells him he should. he doesn’t think, he just moves. he’s not sure any of it’s real until he’s holding her hand. (she stole his breath when they first met and only now does he feel like he’s beginning to get it back. it’s still hers though. it always will be. like a plant, he needs his sun.) she looks good. (better than she did last time she had a baby.) she smiles when she sees him. she’s sad, but she’s happy too. there he was, thinking he’d never see her again. thinking it was all over. but she smiled at him. he’s never letting go of her hand.

later, they’ll go back to seattle. they’ll bring her three beautiful children to her house (much later, she’ll buy the house back from him. he’ll have visions of them in the house ~~their house~~ making terrible dinners–neither of them knows how to cook–and playing with the kids. he’ll move out with jo though. he’s never been good at saying what he feels. and he’s still so afraid he’ll ruin her.) they’ll tuck the kids in and he’ll hug her tight. he’ll call amelia because he wants someone to make sure she doesn’t leave again. he wants to stay himself. he wants to stay forever. but jo is waiting at the house and alex has to trust that mer will be there tomorrow. and the next day. alex has to trust that she’ll be there and greet him with a smile.

 

**Author's Note:**

> tell me if you think this should be marked explicit. this was not beta'd and i've never proofread anything in my life. thanks for reading! sorry it's shit.


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